Why Are All These Young Professionals Living in Trucks?

As it turns out, New York City isn't the only place in America where residents feel like the rent is too damn high. In San Francisco, where the average apartment 10 miles within city limits goes for $3,512 a month, young people are fed up—and they're taking to the streets...and, uh, the parking lots.

"I realized I was paying an exorbitant amount of money for the apartment I was staying in—and I was almost never home," Brandon, one 23-year-old Google employee told Business Insider this week. "It's really hard to justify throwing that kind of money away. You're essentially burning it—you're not putting equity in anything and you're not building it up for a future—and that was really hard for me to reconcile."

That's why Brandon, who works as a software engineer at the internet mega-corp, decided to up and move all his earthly belongings from a conventional apartment into a 16' box truck—which he parks in the Google employee lot. That's where he's been sleeping every night since mid-May—a social experiment he's chronicled on a personal blog called Thoughts From Inside the Box. The pros of truck living? Saving money, short commute, healthy daily regimen, and life experience—"There is never going to be a better time in my life for me to try this," he writes. The cons to truck living include what Brandon calls social suicide—being "that guy"—inconvenience, stress, anxiety, upfront expenses (buying the truck), and really minimizing his chances of getting laid.

Interestingly enough, it was my mom who asked me about this one. I can only imagine that it's going to be next to impossible to get laid when I'm the van guy. Sure, I can get a hotel for the night, but it's still strange and I still have a bit of explaining and convincing to do. Since I'm not nearly smooth enough for that, I've accepted the fact that I'm going to be celibate for the next who knows how long.

In spite of all these drawbacks, it seems like lots of young professionals—university-educated, employed, seemingly normal and mature human adults—in and around San Francisco are going the vehicle-route in lieu of permanent housing.

Software engineer Katharine Patterson works in "a multi-million dollar office" in Silicon Valley and lives in a van, which she parks on the street in an unnamed Bay Area neighborhood. She penned a story in Quartz last month about how she kitted out a 1969 VW Camper with furnishings from Ikea. And even though sleeping in your car on public land is illegal in the state of California, she justifies it with this reasoning:

There are many people who are forced to live in their cars because they really cannot afford to live in the Bay Area. I am not technically one of them, and in doing this by choice I am inevitably appropriating their hardships. However, I am also saving hard, trying to pay off my debts, and learning a few invaluable life skills—like carpentry and how to be a fairly competent mechanic—in the process. Also, I get to flood social media with updates that basically equate to "Ha. Told you I'd do it. Look at me now. I'm in a bus. You're going to have to pay up on the $5 bet you made that I would never go through with it."

Some enterprising young people are even leaving land in search of affordable accommodation. When Sarah Carter, a 23-year-old e-commerce startup employee, moved to San Francisco, she decided to eschew apartment living altogether and, instead, paid $9,600 for a 136-square-foot boat...to live in. She pays for utilities and marina docking (which includes Internet access) and says her monthly living costs work out to about $350. "If I live there for five months, I'll hit break-even on the rent of the apartments I was looking at," she told Business Insider. "It really is a steal."

Would you ever consider living on a boat, in a truck, or in a van to save money? What if it was a really NICE boat, truck, or van? Tell us what you think about these creative living solutions in the comments below.